US community solar could be worth US$2.5 billion by 2020, Navigant says

Community solar can allow low income households, as well as homeowners with shared rooftops, such as on apartment blocks, to benefit from PV. Images: GRID Alternatives. Community solar in the US could be a market worth as much as US$2.5 billion in revenues by 2020, but accommodating it will require a rethink of utility business models, a new report by Navigant Research claims. According to the report, by the end of 2015 around 88.6MW of community solar, in other words PV installed on behalf of households that lack suitable rooftop space to host their own array, was deployed in the US. Drivers including falling costs, the use of virtual net metering and relative ease of development – most community programmes take less than a year to deploy, the report said – are combining with continuing demand for clean energy at residential and commercial level. This could take the marke...